Connected lighting market set to grow by nearly 30% by 2023

Smart cities will be a major driver of the expansion with APAC expected to register the highest incremental growth due to increasing technology awareness by governments.

Smart lighting is often the starting point for smart cities

The global connected streetlight market is expected to post a compound annual growth rate of more than 28 per cent during the period 2019-2023, with smart cities a major contributor to its growth, according to latest research from Technavio.

Smart lighting is often seen as a starting point for smart cities, providing a digital infrastructure to roll out further applications down the line in areas such as monitoring air quality and traffic congestion.

Europe is the current leader

This research report segments the global smart streetlight market by connectivity (wired and wireless) and geographical regions (APAC, North America, Europe, South America, and the Middle East and Africa).

The European region led the market in 2018, followed by North America, APAC, MEA, and South America respectively. During the forecast period, the APAC region is expected to register the highest incremental growth, due to the increasing technology awareness and technology adoption by governments in the region.

More than a third of the growth (34 per cent) will come from Europe. In 2018, five European cities took the Humble Lamppost initiative for the deployment of smart technologies, including smart street lights. Many such factors are expected to drive the growth of smart street lighting market size in Europe.

“The upfront cost of PLC based wired connected streetlight is higher than that of smart streetlight systems that work on a wireless communication module"

The rising focus on reducing energy costs and carbon dioxide emissions will also lead to increased adoption of smart streetlights.

“The wired connected street lights use programmable logic controller (PLC), which is the most secure communication module and is better than a wireless communication module such as Bluetooth,” said a senior analyst at Technavio.

“However, the upfront cost of PLC-based wired connected streetlight is higher than that of smart streetlight systems that work on a wireless communication module. As a result, the adoption of wireless streetlights is expected to increase significantly during the next few years.”

The report describes the market as “fairly concentrated” with a few players occupying market share. It features detailed analysis on Adesto Technologies, Cisco Systems, Itron, Signify and Telensa.